Directed evolution, modifying a parent protein such that the modified protein exhibits a desirable property, can be achieved by mutagenizing one or more parent proteins and screening the mutants to identify those having a desired property. A variety of directed evolution methods are currently available for generating protein variants that exhibit altered function, compared to a parent polypeptide. However, currently available methods involve generation of tens of thousands to a million or more mutants, which must be screened to find a few critical mutations. Thus, application of currently available methods is limited by inefficiency of screening the enormous number of mutants that are generated.
There is a need in the art for efficient methods of designing and generating protein variants that exhibit altered function, without the need for generating and screening large numbers of variants.
Literature
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